Exciting news (well, for me): My masters thesis on the Relevance of Weblogs for the Work of Political Journalists just went into print. (It’s German only, sorry, but you’ll find the abstract at the end of this post.)
The thesis is now available through amazon.de:
Author: Peter Bihr Publisher: Vdm Verlag Dr. Müller (March 2008) ISBN-10: 3836464292 ISBN-13: 978-3836464291 Pages: 228 Price: 79 Euros
A bit of a steep price, if you ask me, but that’s not my decision. On the other hand, props and thanks to my publisher VDM for being so open-minded when it came to using Creative Commons. They’ve been incredibly supportive when we negotiated the licensing details, so the full text is also available as a free download under a Creative Commons license here (PDF, ca. 1MB, 227 pages).
If you have any questions or feedback, please get in touch through email (peter@web26.s295.goserver.host) or through the contact form.
And here’s what the thesis is about:
Abstract As either competition or partners of traditional media, weblogs are assumed to become increasingly relevant for journalism (see Gillmor 2006, Neuberger 2006b, Bucher/Büffel 2006, Benkler 2006): In US election campaigns, bloggers have long since become heavyweights in their role as political commentators, and in Germany corporations and political parties also increasingly use weblogs as a means of communication.
How relevant are weblogs for the day-to-day work of political journalists in Germany? For this study, I interviewed political journalists working at German newspapers (print and online) as well as news agencies about the relevance of weblogs for their work.
The interviewed political journalists attested weblogs to be of little relevance for their work. Weblogs were attributed more relevance for international political reporting than for domestic political reporting.
Keywords: Weblogs, Blogs, Blogosphere, Political Journalists, Citizen Journalism, Participatory Journalism, Web 2.0, Journalism
1 Comment
Vdm Verlag Dr. Müller offers anyone they can find and who has recently written a Bachelor’s/Master’s/Diplom-thesis to print the work (I have received offers by them twice). Therefore, don’t expect books of quality by this publisher. I would even assume that they try to make money off of libraries which have to buy every book ever published in Germany, by simply printing on demand only.